Performance Analysis of Decentralized RAN (Radio Access Network) Discovery Schemes for IEEE 802.21

Abstract

As more wireless access networks become available, there is a new challenge emerged: how to discover currently available radio access networks (RANs). To discover available RANs without help from centralized servers, each mobile host periodically turns on network interfaces to discover available networks. Performance of a RAN discovery scheme may depend on how to maintain a valid list of available networks while minimizing power consumption to discover RANs. In this paper, we derive several decentralized RAN discovery schemes. Through extensive simulations, we evaluate them in terms of achieved bandwidth, the number of handovers and power consumption.